When I were a little lad, living in one of the poorest neighbourhoods just outside Manchester, parents thought nothing of letting the kids play out all evening in summer and there were always lots of people about. In Italy, families with all the kids turn out for an evening stroll to a local bar or something like that and the streets are always heaving with people, even at ten or eleven in the evening. They even have a name for it, la passeggiata. The same thing happens in Spain (paseo). Everybody is safe, there's never any trouble and it's all very pleasant. Our towns and streets belong to all of us and we should not let a small minority of screwballs make us afraid to take possession of them. If we give it to that we turn the places we live in into bandit country.